To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight

515 Pages·2003·4.61 MB·English

by  James Tobin

Praise for To Conquer the Air
“Detailed, well written, and told with the grace of a symphony conductor
making with his wand one grand and glorious whole out of many melodies . . .
Tobin has written a history of early flight that ought to become the standard for
this generation.”
—National Geographic Adventure
“You don’t have to be an aviation buff to be spellbound by this wonderfully
told American success story.”
—Reader’s Digest
“A dogged researcher and a great storyteller . . . Tobin beautifully recreates
the Wright brothers’ mental universe . . . Kudos to Tobin for capturing the
challenge and thrills of this extraordinary individual and collective achievement
in this well-written, enlightening book.”
—The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
“This extraordinarily well-written and deeply nuanced work is the best of the
recent spate of books celebrating the Wright Brothers . . . A detailed yet truly
exciting tale . . . this should stand as the definitive account of their life and
times.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A remarkably fluent account of the technological obstacles to flying that had
to be overcome, but also a moving narrative of the personal drama involved.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A meticulous account of the grinding, day-to-day advances and setbacks, but
also infected with the sheer wonder of taking wing.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Tobin tells his detailed, exacting story well and makes the mysteries of flight
comprehensible. [He] brings the Wright Brothers out of the dustbin of history
and into the readers’ imaginations . . . To Conquer the Air is a fine book that
provides a signal service in illuminating the discovery of flight.”
—Bookreporter.com
“Tobin transforms thorough research into a flowing narrative with news for
even connoisseurs of Kitty Hawk.”
—Booklist
“Of the many books being released in this centennial year to mark the Wright
Brothers’ achievement, the one that best captures this wonderful all-American
chili of a story is James Tobin’s To Conquer the Air.”
—Christianity Today
“Superb.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“To Conquer the Air is in every way a thrilling story that takes the Wright
brothers out of their traditional isolation at Dayton and Kitty Hawk and places
them front and center in a drama of invention, daring, competition, and eventual
triumph.”
—Justin Kaplan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mr. Clemens and Mark
Twain: A Biography
“Whether judged in terms of scholarship or writing, this is an outstanding
narrative of the Wright brothers’ and their competitors’ race to fly. The story is
compelling in itself, yet this book is larger than that story alone. It explores
man’s dreams, and what is required to transform a dream into reality. And it is a
book that teaches us about heroism—not the kind that comes from a surge of
adrenaline but the heroism that determines how one lives.”
—John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and
How It Changed America
“James Tobin explains with meticulous clarity the mysteries of nature and the
challenges of technology that vexed the Wright brothers’ pursuit of machine-
powered flight. He also tells the riveting tale of their fevered rivalry with the
imperious head of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley, with
fabled inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and with the brash daredevil Glenn
Curtiss. How two homespun Midwestern tinkerers prevailed against such
formidable competitors in the race to achieve the miracle of flight is a tale as
thrilling as it is inspirational. An utterly engrossing read.”
—David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Freedom from Fear:
The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
“To Conquer the Air differs from all previous books on the Wright brothers in
that their rivals in the race for flight emerge from the background, full-bodied
and three-dimensional for the first time. It will be many years before a livelier,
more readable history of the invention of the airplane makes an appearance.”
—Fred Howard, author of Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright
Brothers
“What The Metaphysical Club was to the development of philosophic thought
in America, this beautiful book is to the development of man in flight. Far more
than a mere account of the Wright brothers’ triumph, To Conquer the Air is a
yeasty, richly drawn evocation of an era and of the strange, visionary, obsessed,
and difficult men who battled one another to claim it in their name.”
—Ron Powers, co-author of Flags of Our Fathers
ALSO BY JAMES TOBIN
Ernie Pyle’s War
Great Projects
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For my parents
James and Dorothy Tobin
with thanks and love